Closing the STEM gender gap

While women make up half of the total U.S. college-educated workforce, they only account for 28% of the science and engineering workforce (source: National Science Board Science & Engineering Indicators, 2018).

Educators like Dr. Rebecca Kuntz Willits are working to close that gap, right here on our campus. As the Margaret F. Donovan Endowed Chair for Women in Engineering and a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, she focuses her research around designing “roads” for regenerating nerves to follow and improve the quality of repair.

In her time spent outside the lab, however, she works on something just as important: increasing diversity of the people in it. Through workshops and mentoring programs, Dr. Willits is a fierce champion of women in science. And with more faculty like her, we can continue to elevate women in STEM fields, making this University a place where the brightest minds of all genders and backgrounds come to do important, groundbreaking work.